Cresta (soft drink)

Cresta was a frothy fruit-flavoured drink produced from the early 1970s through the beginning of the 1990s. It originally came in four different flavours; strawberry, lemon & lime, pineapple and orange^[1] with blackcurrent added later^[2]. Eventually the drink was withdrawn from sale, reputedly because it contained too much tartrazine.^[3] Despite this, the product appears to still be available; it is manufactured by The Coca-Cola Company.^[4]

Advertising Campaign

Cresta is widely remembered for its 1970s advertising campaign led by a cartoon polar bear (also called Cresta) sporting sunglasses whose attempts at looking suavely cool would be overwhelmed by bouts of uncontrolled enthusiasm when drinking Cresta. The bear's widely quoted catch phrase "It's frothy man!" summed up the difference between Cresta and more traditionally fizzy soft drinks.^[5] Dialogues would include bouts of chicken noises and occasionally cries of Rimsky Korsakov when inspired by swigging the drink. ^[6]

References

1. ^ Original Cresta ad listing the four flavours
2. ^ Advertisement at the time of the introduction of the blackcurrent version
3. ^ Tartrazine cited as reason for Cresta's removal
4. ^ http://www.portal.euromonitor.com.ezproxy.lib.le.ac.uk/Portal/ResultsList.aspx
5. ^ Sample Cresta Advertisement
6. ^ Sample Cresta Bear Dialogue, 1974; Bear: Do you know what all the bears up at the North Pole drink when they’re thirsty? It’s the sea man — the Arctic Ocean! Now me, I’m really into this frothy Cresta — like this strawberry flavour. The day they start making the Arctic Ocean in strawberry is the only day this young bear’s going to drink it!